IMBB: We're living in the Seventies!

See also: Fried Green Tomatoes, deep-fried Mars bar and deep-fried boiled eggs for more oily delights!

Non-Aussie readers may not get the Skyhooks reference there. If you did, you'll end up like I am now with the phrase 'We're living in the SEVENTIES! da da daaah daaah daaaaaah dah! dah!!' on repeat in your brain for the whole night. Why? Read on...
The theme for this month's Is My Blog Burning is hosted by At Our Table with the theme of "Winter's Flying, let's get frying" (yes, I used the alternative southern-hemisphere title). I actually forgot about this until Friday afternoon, and I wondered how I could incorporate something fried into our already planned roast chicken dinner. The chips we'd have? Naaaah.
Then it hit me. We are lucky (?) enough to have a whizz-bang German deep fryer built into our kitchen bench, and we had a small round of Danish camembert in the fridge. I'm going retro! A whole breadcrumbed deep-fried camembert.....heart attack on a plate!! Yay!
Mum heard what I'd be making and started laughing - pointing out how she remembered doing it for dinner parties in the 70s...which prompted the Skyhooks song earworm. Evidently the big pub in the main street of St Arnaud in western Victoria is living in the 70s as well, as I recall seeing it on the menu there....and watching my friend's dad eat it for a entree. A pretty decadent entree, when you're following it with a pub-size steak and chips! Ouch.

So, with the deep fryer heating up, I used my bowl of rye breadcrumbs I'd fried in butter and bacon fat last week for a cheap spaghetti supper. Because, if you're going to deep fry cheese, you may as well coat it in bacon fat-soaked breadcrumbs. No?
Cut the cheese in half and dip into a beaten egg, then vainly attempt to roll it around in the breadcrumbs and make some stick. Seems crunchy fried breadcrumbs are not really the best option for this. Some sort of batter would be better, but anyway....
Make up a dipping sauce for your fried cheese. These deep fried camembert dishes are usually served with some kind of sweet fruit sauce, to cut through the richness of the cheese. So, I made up something using the plum & nectarine jam I made last summer, livened up with a bit of lemon juice and ground black pepper. It worked really well, successfully cutting through the rich gooiness of the cheese.
In the event, I was so worried about the cheese starting to melt through the breadcrumbs or exploding or disintegrating or something, that I possibly didn't leave it in long enough. You can see how I cut the cheese half open to create a sexy food porn image of molten flowing cheese. Which didn't happen. The cheese was soft and warm, but not flowing. Ah well.
It all tasted pretty good as we attacked it with duelling forks, dipping it in fruit jam, and washing down each mouthful with a nice glass of vintage Yellowglen sparkling.

A. had never heard of this 'bizarre' fried camembert concept before, ("is this a uniquely Aussie thing?") but he really did enjoy it. Although, he did point out that anyone who ordered and actually ate a whole one for an entree before ordering a main deserves everything that comes to them in middle-age! We struggled to get through our own small half.
Although, I can't say I really took much notice of him; I was already busy crumbing a chunk of King Island blue cheese to see how that would fry up. Mmmmmm.....deep fried blue cheese.... Smelly. :-)